1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method and a tool to simulate the behavior of an IC device, and more particularly, to a method and a tool for generating a simulation case for an IC device.
2. Description of Related Art
Referring to FIG. 1, a flowchart illustrating a conventional method for developing an IC device is shown. The method includes Project Initialization Phase 11, Software Plan Phase 13, Design Phase 15, Validation 17 and Mass Production 19. During Design Phase 15, the designer simulates the behavior of the hardware he designed to verity if the logic within the hardware acts as he wants it to be. There are many software programs conventionally used to simulate the operation of complex IC devices for verification of logical correctness. Moreover, during the Validation phase 17, emulation is performed to set-up the environment where the IC devices are applied for verifying the correctness of the whole electronic system. In general, the simulation case is composed of machine-readable commands in sequence defined in a simulation tool to perform the actual actions of the IC devices, such as writing data, reading data or other actions. Thus, the IC designer must use a special simulation tool in the simulation process and the emulation process during Software Plan Phase 13 under a specified specification of hardware architecture.
Conventionally, designers of different or even the same IC devices may independently create their own formats of simulation cases according to respective hardware architectures and design concepts, which is adverse to integration of technologies and leads to waste of resources.
Therefore, an object of the present invention is to solve the problem of redundant work and improve design efficiency.